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All the Pretty Horses
***
Cinema
Releases - May 25, 2001
Certificate 15. 116 minutes. Directed by Billy
Bob Thornton. Written by Ted Tally; from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Starring
Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, Penelope Cruz, Lucas Black, Ruben
Blades.
Going through friendship and romance, journey
and discovery, horror, tragedy and reconciliation, "All the Pretty
Horses" keeps on unfolding and developing, and is simply a damn good
piece of storytelling. I never read the prize-winning Cormac McCarthy book
that this movie was based on, but I do know that the film itself unfolds
carefully over an expansive canvas, with the same feel of involvement as
a well-written epic novel.
The picture opens in Texas, 1949. Matt Damon and
Henry Thomas play brothers with little idea of what they're going to do now
the family farm has been sold. They ride across the border to Mexico, looking
to find work. They run into a kid who runs away from home, get in a little
trouble with him, move on. Damon becomes a star hand at a Mexico ranch, gets
promoted faster than his brother, has a forbidden romance with the boss's
daughter. And time goes on, and unexpected events are drifted into, and the
feel of things drifts from peaceful to tempestuous to sad to poignant, and
so on and so forth.
This is a Western that feels hard-bitten at the
same time as poetic and elegiac. Billy Bob Thornton, the director, has given
it tough texture and also the poignancy of memory. It's an interesting beauty
to watch, and covers a lot of ground; by the time we leave we've been through
a lot with the characters, and although the press notes declare the running
time to be 116 minutes, I thought I had clocked it in at 140. (Perhaps my
watch is playing tricks on me.)
One thing "All the Pretty Horses" represents is
the thriving career of Penelope Cruz. Also this week she appears in "Blow",
with Johnny Depp, and less than a month ago we saw her in "Captain Corelli's
Mandolin". She's growing out of geeky, annoying fare like "Woman on Top"
and starting to endear. Damon and Thomas, as ever, come across as strong
sympathetic men -- noble cowboys under beautifully photographed open skies,
in a film that shows you can make 'em like they used to, and do it
well.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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